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Strange Things That Scared You (But Aren't Obviously 'Scary')

I grew up in the 70s. I went to church but not the sort that did ashes on foreheads....

It reminds me of the idea of marking front doors with a cross to identify plague victim homes......Maybe that is what might disturb a child, if they have heard of the plague/marking front doors.....?
It's very much a Roman Catholic thing. Ash Wednesday is the day after Shrove (Pancake)Tuesday. As far as I can remember it represents the burnt cross.
 
I remember as a young child my parents would visit their friends on the weekends, and when it got late we were put into bed in a room upstairs.
There was a very tall old black piece of furniture in the corner of this room which frightened me to death, I was sure a monster was in this closet, and would keep opening my eyes to check if the closet door had opened. LOL!
To this day I cannot get into bed until I check underneath, and open the closet doors to make sure everything is ok! :)
 
C of E too.
I think I might have gone to a C of E church when I was very young but then we moved to a new area and I ended up going to a small church nearby which was neither C of E or Catholic.

I can't think of something that scared me that wasn't really scary.....apart from the Darleks on Doctor who.....

I am sure there were some things that were creepy/scary.....

I know I didn't like the lights being completely off when I was a child. I had my bedroom door ajar and the room opposite (bathroom) light was left on....

I think I found the beginning of The Incredible Hulk a bit disturbing....I recall there was a bit where you saw the cause of his Hulk-inducing condition. It was some sort of experiment gone wrong....I found that more disturbing than the Hulk itself....

I bet there is a clip of it on Youtube....I am not going to look on there and give myself any nightmares....
 
I remember as a young child my parents would visit their friends on the weekends, and when it got late we were put into bed in a room upstairs.
There was a very tall old black piece of furniture in the corner of this room which frightened me to death, I was sure a monster was in this closet, and would keep opening my eyes to check if the closet door had opened. LOL!
To this day I cannot get into bed until I check underneath, and open the closet doors to make sure everything is ok! :)
I think my sister remembers a cupboard in a bedroom at our grandparents' place that disturbed her. I think it seemed dark/large and she used to worry it would fall over onto her or something....I am a few year's younger than her and can't remember staying overnight there but my sister must have done to worry about the cupboard....
 
We were strictly C of E as was my school, but I know about Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday and other similar traditions because they were explained to us either at school or at home. We knew what Easter was all about, and some of the more peripheral traditions in the church - whether we believed in any of it or not was left up to us. My brother is now a devout Christian and I.... am not.
 
We were strictly C of E as was my school, but I know about Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday and other similar traditions because they were explained to us either at school or at home. We knew what Easter was all about, and some of the more peripheral traditions in the church - whether we believed in any of it or not was left up to us. My brother is now a devout Christian and I.... am not.
I probably got told all about it at school and forgot. I have a brain that remembers some things in great detail. Other stuff gets forgotten, I suspect to make room for the detailed stuff.....
 
So last night, I woke up at about 5am as the sun had come up and was shining through a slit between my curtains, getting me straight in the face.
I decided to head to the bathroom for a leak.
My vacuum cleaner is a Kercher Wet & Dry model (see pic below) and most of the time it lives downstairs next to the 'meter cupboard'.
However a day or two ago I had used it upstairs and left it on the landing, next to the bathroom door.
As I stepped out of my bedroom the damned thing suddenly became an old man, crouched over, wearing a dark cloak (or at least for a fraction of a second it did until I realised that it was my vacuum cleaner) and I jumped back quite shocked.
And then immediately I felt like a total arse.
1659089183044.png
 
So last night, I woke up at about 5am as the sun had come up and was shining through a slit between my curtains, getting me straight in the face.
I decided to head to the bathroom for a leak.
My vacuum cleaner is a Kercher Wet & Dry model (see pic below) and most of the time it lives downstairs next to the 'meter cupboard'.
However a day or two ago I had used it upstairs and left it on the landing, next to the bathroom door.
As I stepped out of my bedroom the damned thing suddenly became an old man, crouched over, wearing a dark cloak (or at least for a fraction of a second it did until I realised that it was my vacuum cleaner) and I jumped back quite shocked.
And then immediately I felt like a total arse.
View attachment 57606
I often get that when I first awake - the hallway lamp visible through the open bedroom doorway invariably looks like a person's head, some textiles my wife has hanging from a picture hook take on all sorts of weird forms, from the benign (chillies hanging to dry) to the quite bizarre.
 
So last night, I woke up at about 5am as the sun had come up and was shining through a slit between my curtains, getting me straight in the face.
I decided to head to the bathroom for a leak.
My vacuum cleaner is a Kercher Wet & Dry model (see pic below) and most of the time it lives downstairs next to the 'meter cupboard'.
However a day or two ago I had used it upstairs and left it on the landing, next to the bathroom door.
As I stepped out of my bedroom the damned thing suddenly became an old man, crouched over, wearing a dark cloak (or at least for a fraction of a second it did until I realised that it was my vacuum cleaner) and I jumped back quite shocked.
And then immediately I felt like a total arse.
View attachment 57606
I often get that when I first awake - the hallway lamp visible through the open bedroom doorway invariably looks like a person's head, some textiles my wife has hanging from a picture hook take on all sorts of weird forms, from the benign (chillies hanging to dry) to the quite bizarre.
Quite understandable. Even wide awake in daytime, I've asked a pile of laundry if it wants to go for a walk.
 
So last night, I woke up at about 5am as the sun had come up and was shining through a slit between my curtains, getting me straight in the face.
I decided to head to the bathroom for a leak.
My vacuum cleaner is a Kercher Wet & Dry model (see pic below) and most of the time it lives downstairs next to the 'meter cupboard'.
However a day or two ago I had used it upstairs and left it on the landing, next to the bathroom door.
As I stepped out of my bedroom the damned thing suddenly became an old man, crouched over, wearing a dark cloak (or at least for a fraction of a second it did until I realised that it was my vacuum cleaner) and I jumped back quite shocked.
And then immediately I felt like a total arse.
View attachment 57606
Probably, given the fright it gave you, it's a good job it's a wet/dry vacuum.
 
I don't know about anyone else, but I was always petrified of going to church -
every Sunday as kids we were forced to attend the hour-long Sunday service, and then there was Sunday School afterwards (not during summer months).
Entering the church itself, everything was hushed, and you weren't supposed to talk, the priests and all involved in the service were in these robes, they would come around (twice) and 'shake' a collection basket in front of you, and if you didn't have anything to put in it, they shook it even harder and gave you a look.
And the organ was so loud, the whole experience was frightening. I can see that some find it comforting, but personally I didn't care for it.
Sunday School was just as bad, religious classes given by a priest or nun, who would rap you on the knuckles with a ruler if you misbehaved.
In those days they got away with things like that! :)
 
So last night, I woke up at about 5am as the sun had come up and was shining through a slit between my curtains, getting me straight in the face.
I decided to head to the bathroom for a leak.
My vacuum cleaner is a Kercher Wet & Dry model (see pic below) and most of the time it lives downstairs next to the 'meter cupboard'.
However a day or two ago I had used it upstairs and left it on the landing, next to the bathroom door.
As I stepped out of my bedroom the damned thing suddenly became an old man, crouched over, wearing a dark cloak (or at least for a fraction of a second it did until I realised that it was my vacuum cleaner) and I jumped back quite shocked.
And then immediately I felt like a total arse.
View attachment 57606
Beware, now that you've found out about the secret night life of Karcher vacuums they'll have to kill you.

Oh bugger, now you've gone and told us.
 
Thing is though, is that Karcher make a number of other items too. Obviously pressure washers, but also mowers, path sweeping machines, steam cleaners, garden hose systems, etc etc etc
I wouldn't want that lot ganging up on me!
 
That's no way to talk about Mrs.F.
I don't even know why the laundry was on the floor anyway, as I'm very tidy. I think I must have been planning to take it downstairs and got waylaid. On here probably.
 
My mum was C of E but worked in an RC school. Sometimes when our term dates were different from her work's, she'd take me in to work with her and I'd be in this inner city Leeds RC school all day.

I remember being freaked out by this picture of the Sacred Heart, which they had in the dinner hall, of all places. Creeped the bejaybus out of me. A few years later I saw that M.R.James story on TV, "Lost Hearts" and that absolutely haunted me for years. I didn't see the connection at the time, only realised much later, maybe it was that Sacred Heart picture, still in the subconscious.
 
I think I might have gone to a C of E church when I was very young but then we moved to a new area and I ended up going to a small church nearby which was neither C of E or Catholic.

I can't think of something that scared me that wasn't really scary.....apart from the Darleks on Doctor who.....

I am sure there were some things that were creepy/scary.....

I know I didn't like the lights being completely off when I was a child. I had my bedroom door ajar and the room opposite (bathroom) light was left on....

I think I found the beginning of The Incredible Hulk a bit disturbing....I recall there was a bit where you saw the cause of his Hulk-inducing condition. It was some sort of experiment gone wrong....I found that more disturbing than the Hulk itself....

I bet there is a clip of it on Youtube....I am not going to look on there and give myself any nightmares....
Weird thing is, the Daleks didn't particularly scare me and I didn't do that classic thing of hiding behind the sofa when they came on telly.

But the cybermen... Scared the hell out of me.

Have seen back and seen pics of those first cybermen and they're laughable. Can't see now why I found them way scarier than daleks.
 
Weird thing is, the Daleks didn't particularly scare me and I didn't do that classic thing of hiding behind the sofa when they came on telly.

But the cybermen... Scared the hell out of me.

Have seen back and seen pics of those first cybermen and they're laughable. Can't see now why I found them way scarier than daleks.
I was exactly the same. For me, it was the way the Cybermen spoke. Back in the day (the 60's for me), they had a kind of 'hissing' asthmatic way of talking. The Daleks spoke like robots, but the Cybermen spoke like 'adapted humans'.

Strangely enough, the 'stomp stomp stomp' sound of the Cybermen walking in the modern version gives me the willies even now. The voices are different and not so scary though.
 
Weird thing is, the Daleks didn't particularly scare me and I didn't do that classic thing of hiding behind the sofa when they came on telly.

But the cybermen... Scared the hell out of me.

Have seen back and seen pics of those first cybermen and they're laughable. Can't see now why I found them way scarier than daleks.
I did the hiding behind the sofa. With my dolls....I think it was the Daleks with me but it could have been anything creepy. Tom Baker was the timelord then. He was a strange and fascinating doctor too.
 
I had a 'middle of the night' incident yesterday - well, this morning, really. I woke up from a nightmare, a confused dream of bad things happening, and went downstairs to the toilet to try to wake myself up. It didn't really work and I found that the whole house had a horrible air of 'doom' over it, every piece of furniture seemed to be hiding something and as I didn't put on any lights, it was full of shadows and generally horrible.

This is probably the least scary house in the world - mysteriously opening cupboards notwithstanding - and I assume that I was still half in a dream state when I went downstairs, which coloured everything in a 'scary' light. But a tap on a window or something scuttling along the floor would have had me in hysterics in half a second.
 
I had a 'middle of the night' incident yesterday - well, this morning, really. I woke up from a nightmare, a confused dream of bad things happening, and went downstairs to the toilet to try to wake myself up. It didn't really work and I found that the whole house had a horrible air of 'doom' over it, every piece of furniture seemed to be hiding something and as I didn't put on any lights, it was full of shadows and generally horrible.

This is probably the least scary house in the world - mysteriously opening cupboards notwithstanding - and I assume that I was still half in a dream state when I went downstairs, which coloured everything in a 'scary' light. But a tap on a window or something scuttling along the floor would have had me in hysterics in half a second.
Well, that at least explains your profile title. :)
 
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